Pages

Sunday, February 20, 2011

GISING! GISING! (SEAFOOD EXTREME)–KULINARYA

Kulinarya’s theme for the month of February 2011 is FILIPINOAPHRODISIAC FOOD.

For this month’s Filipino dish theme, to tell you the truth I was a bit lost as the only Filipino Aphrodisiac Food I know is Balut and Soup No.5 (Filipino Soup with Bull’s “you know what!”). This two main Filipino Aphrodisiac Food have that famous urban myth with the locals that it will give males longer stamina in that private exercises that usually occurs behind the bedroom doors. If you haven’t known yet, there’s something about animal private parts associates with human sexual drives in Asian countries….but chicken butts is grouped separately because it’s associated with being talkative (Filipino urban myth) if you eat too much, LOL!

PULUTAN COOKBOOK

So, because it is hard to find Bull’s “you know what!” here in Brisbane, Australia and I for one won’t dare to eat the dish….I went and look at my growing pile of cookbooks. I found the “Pulutan” cookbook that was given to me by my gorgeous cousin Miss C. from the Philippines. Thank you, Insan!

Aphrodisiac Food in general, also includes Seafood and Chilies so what I selected for this February’s Kulinarya theme was “Gising! Gising! (Seafood Extreme)” from the “Pulutan” cookbook which was compiled by two soldiers that was detained because of their participation on revolting against the past Arroyo’s government because of mishandling of military funds. While they were detained, they made good use of their time and collected Pulutan recipes from people around them that are usually cooked to be paired out with beers and spirits drinking sessions.

Filipinos eat/nibble while they drink, which I think is healthier then just drinking straight which I find boring. I associates Aphrodisiac Food with Pulutan (dishes for drinking session) because the ingredients to name a few are seafood, chilies, weird and wacky animal parts. In the Philippines, it’s the men who cooks their homemade Pulutan for their own private drinking sessions. It’s like here in Australia, guys gather around the Bbq with their ice cold stubbies (beers) cooking snags (sausages) and chops (lamb/beef/pork)….foodie male bonding, I guess=)

Okey, I better stop….we have to focus on the dish=) I think this post is going to long now, hehehehe! I should post about Pulutan separately, such a good topic to talk about=)

~ Separate the Marinara mix into squid & tuna, shrimps and mussels as we are going to cook this groups in stages.

~ In a large wok/pan, heat (medium high) the butter and sauté the garlic and onions. Add in the fish and squid pieces, stir for awhile till they become slightly cooked. Stir in the shrimps.

~ Keep in stirring mixture till the shrimps turns light orange. Add in your mussels and sauté for another minute. Pour in your prepped vegetables and stir fry for around 2-3 minutes.

~ Season with sugar, ground pepper, oyster sauce, chili sauce and dark soy sauce. Reduce the heat into medium heat, give the mixture a good stir and let it simmer. Pour in the cornstarch slurry (stir before pouring) and quickly mix the mixture to evenly distribute the slurry to the sauce. Simmer it for another 1-2 minutes and test the vegetables by eating some pieces of it, it should be crunchy but cooked. Sauce will thicken by this time, so keep on stirring for even cooking but be careful so that you don’t break the fish pieces too much.

~ Pour Gising! Gising! (Seafood Extreme) in a large serving bowl or a large sizzling plate and serve while it’s still hot.

BEST WITH: Crispy Fried Fish and Fresh Steamed Rice or a couple of Ice Cold Beers.

NOTES:

Mr. H and I finds the original recipe quite salty so I reduced the oyster sauce from 4 tbspn to 3 tbspn and soy sauce to just 4 tspn, omitted the salt and added sugar to create that roundness on the combined flavours.

This Gising! Gising! version is very tasty, this dish is more like a Spicy Seafood Chopsuey to us, we find it delicious!

The Marinara mix here in Australia is already cleaned and prepped so I don’t have to do anything with it, except I rinsed the batch I bought in Woolworths as some crazy person thinks putting chopped parsley into it as decoration is good…..not! Picking bits and pieces of parsley is quite annoying=( Specially if it’s not required for the recipe.

I know…..I know, there are other versions of Gising! Gising! Cusinera will definitely cook them in the future and will let you know which one tops from the rest=)

25 comments:

Wow! This is going to be in my to do list. We love seafoods. I'd make this into ulam than "tan-puluts" This does have a lot of aphrodisiac components aside from the seafoods. You have the oyster sauce w/c i believe would be considered. You have the peppers, garlic and onions. I like your cookbook too=;) Your shots are beautiful as well. Great job, Althea! Thanks!

@Pia~ thanks for a wonderful theme....na challenge talaga ako=) Oo nga ano, the oyster sauce, peppers, garlic and onions...counted as aphrodisiac food=) Thanks also for noticing my pics...I'm still learning to appreciate the manual mode in my dslr, I still run back to my old point and shoot every now and then for easy pic taking=)

@Anonymous~ Which one is it...."it looks like It taste matabang or matabang tlaga". When you say "it looks like" (parang), that means you haven't cooked/try it yet so don't judge the dish by how it looks because the sauce is not that dark to your liking. If you have tried cooking it and you find it lacking in seasoning, well you should have read the NOTES as the original recipe instructed more but I reduced it as we find it too salty.

Everybody knows that when you cook you have to taste during the cooking process so that you can adjust the seasoning to your liking.

I've come across several versions. For purists, you might like to try coconut milk instead of cornstarch. And we use only vegetables and some pork, fried in teaspoon of bagoong. Place the veggies then pour the gata. It may guide you but my version uses the kangkong stalk blanched, along with some green chilies cut the same length as the kangkong. Added to this is ginger for that wakeup call to which the dish is derived. Kaya nga gising gising. I apologize but I'm a purist